A Phantom in Contemporary European Choreography: What is Beckett doing to us dance-makers? Can we do something to him in return? or, a series of realizations, three instances and an afterthought

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Thanks to Anna Pakes for encouraging me to submit an article for this issue and to Joe Kelleher, Catherine Laws and Thomas Mansell for their help and fruitful comments on drafts of this writing.

Notes

¹Such works have been performed by Lapsus Corpi, a London-based performance group directed by Efrosini Protopapa. For more information, visit <www.lapsuscorpi.org>

² Quad was first transmitted in Germany by Süddeutscher Rundfunk in 1982 under the title Quadrat 1+2 and consequently by BBC 2 on 16 December 1982. It was first published by Faber and Faber, London, in 1984 (Beckett 1984: 290).

³The translation was based on the text published by Faber and Faber (1984) and was for the Athens-based streettheatre group of Titina Halmatzi in November 2000.

⁴Or, as critic Donald Hutera wrote in his review of QUADish-ish, it could also be seen as a staged situation that makes possible ‘[a]ll sorts of metaphorical readings about repeated historical patterns and new social orders’ (Hutera 2005).

⁵ Not I was written in English in spring 1972 and was first published by Faber and Faber, London, in 1973. It was first performed at the Forum Theater of the Lincoln Center, New York, in September 1972, and its first performance in Britain was at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in January 1973 (Beckett 1984: 214).

⁶ Krapp's Last Tape was written in English in early 1958. It was first published in Evergreen Review in summer 1958 and was first performed in October 1958 at the Royal Court Theatre, London (Beckett 1984: 54).

⁷Other choreographers who are considered part of such movement are Jérôme Bel, Jonathan Burrows, Boris Charmatz, La Ribot, Thomas Lehmen, Xavier Le Roy and Meg Stuart, among others. As Lepecki (2006: 45) clarifies however, although the particular European movement in dance has been gaining shape, visibility and force since the mid-1990s, it does not constitute an organized movement; neither does it have a proper name. Writers who have focused on the abovementioned choreographers and who discuss the issues such works raise about choreography today include Ramsay Burt, Bojana Cvejic, Pirkko Husemann, André Lepecki, Joroen Peeters, Helmut Ploebst, Gerald Siegmund and Dorothea von Hantelmann.

⁸‘We took flight in arithmetic. What mental calculations bent double hand in hand!’ (Beckett 1965, quoted in Gontarski 1995: 188).

⁹At a post–show discussion after the performance of Bloody Mess at Riverside Studios, November 2005, for example.

¹⁰For more info, visit http://www.mobileacademy-warsaw.com/englisch/ 2006/start.html

¹¹ With due acknowledgement to C.J. Ackerley and S.E. Gontarski (2004) The Grove Companion to Samuel Beckett: A Reader's Guide to His Works, Life and Thought.